The government is providing a package of up to £180 million of workforce training, qualifications and support and guidance for the early years sector to help address the impact of the pandemic on the youngest and most disadvantaged children.

The programmes are designed for early years:

• practitioners
• leaders
• settings, including private, voluntary, independent organisations, childminders, school based nurseries and maintained nursery schools

Designed to support all areas of the early years sector, the package offers training in:

• child development
• communication and language, early mathematics and personal, social and emotional development through the third phase of our professional development programme
• Nuffield Early Language Intervention
• leadership of settings with a new national professional qualification in early years leadership
• supporting care givers in their home learning environment

Additional funding for qualifications:

• graduate-level specialist training leading to early years teacher status
• accredited level 3 early years SENCO qualification
• a review of the level 3 qualification and criteria

Support and guidance to all early years settings through:

• stronger practice hubs
• expert coaches and mentors

For further details -  click here.

You can encourage parents and carers to chat, play and read more with their children with the help of the Home Learning Environment campaign. Better Health Start for Life and the Department for Education will continue this campaign in 2023. From Monday 16^th January national paid media and search advertising will be encouraging Chat, Play, Read.

A range of resources are available on the Campaign Resource Centre including A4 and A3 Posters, Empty belly posters (so you can add in local activities such as chat and play sessions), Digital Screens, Social Media toolkit and Campaign Communications Toolkit (which includes guidance for healthcare practitioners).

Download Now!

The GP Infant Feeding Network  has a wide range of resources to support parents who are breast feeding.

The NHS Healthy Start Scheme is for those who want to give their child and themselves the healthiest start in life. The new prepaid card allows you to get at least £4.25 a per week of food staples & check your balance at nearby ATMs with the Mastercard logo.  If you’re pregnant or have a child under the age of 4, you could be entitled to receive a prepaid card to support the cost of healthy essentials.

There are many benefits to joining the NHS Healthy Start Scheme. It could take as little 5 minutes to see if you qualify and to complete the online application form. Find out more here.

Foster carers are key to supporting the emotional wellbeing of children in care; but not enough is known about what kind of training or programmes best support carers to achieve this task.

This study, developed by Anna Freud, and run by University College London (UCL), in collaboration with a number of other universities and local authority partners, focuses on investigating the effectiveness of one promising form of support for foster carers: the Reflective Fostering Programme.

To find out more click here .